acne Te ee ee eee 
VIII. 1.] THE SECOND BOOK. eta £2 
principal part, and holdeth rank with physic special and 
metaphysic, which is mathematic; but I think it more 
agreeable to the nature of things, and to the light of order, 
to place it as a branch of metaphysic. For the subject of 
it being quantity, not quantity indefinite, which is but a 
relative, and belongeth to phzlosophia prima (as hath been 
said), but quantity determined or proportionable, it appear- 
eth to be one of the essential forms of things, as that that 
is causative in nature of a number of effects ; insomuch as 
we see in the schools both of Democritus and of Pytha- 
goras, that the one did ascribe figure to the first seeds of 
things, and the other did suppose numbers to be the 
principles and originals of things. And it is true also that 
of all other forms (as we understand forms) it is the most 
abstracted and separable from matter, and therefore most 
proper to metaphysic; which hath likewise been the cause 
why it hath been better laboured and inquired than any 
of the other forms, which are more immersed into matter. 
For it being the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme 
prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty 
of generalities, as in a champain region, and not in the 
inclosures of particularity, the mathematics of all other 
knowledge were the goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite. 
But for the placing of this science, it is not much ma- 
terial: only we have endeavoured in these our partitions 
to observe a kind of perspective, that one part may cast 
light upon another. 
2. The mathematics are either pure or mixed. To the 
puremathematics are those sciences belonging which handle 
quantity determinate, merely severed from any axioms of 
natural philosophy; and these are two, geometry and 
arithmetic; the one handling quantity continued, and the 
other dissevered. Mixed hath for subject some axioms 
